this is Salem, a land filled with magic and maladies. It is a place where witches and their elemental familiars gather, a home to legend and
lore that predates time itself. Yet of all the wicked and wonderful stories the past can tell us of, the most magical are the ones yet to happen.
This is Salem - this is the start of your very own journey. Welcome to starfall
Starfall is an animaga witch roleplay set in mostly modern times. Members play as witches in a world plagued by monsters, where the only safe spots are walled cities. Starfall strives to be a character-driven roleplay with expansive lore and a highly interactive plotline. We want to allow members to
create and look back on a magical journey, and mold the site and its plot as their characters grow.
she kicks up dust. small bits of gravel have wormed their way into her ratty sneakers. it's about time she wraps another layer of duct tape around them. but that's an errand for another day. right now she's busy doing jack shit. after several days of laying low (after a bit of shoplifting in the more uppity parts of the city), nyla's nagging has finally gotten the better of her. the familiar presses at her mind and parker can feel the bird's ache to stretch her wings.
and parker feels it too. but the girl only likes attention on her when she wants it. and nyla prefers not to manifest as a smaller version of herself. no, when she emerges, she must do so in all her glory. and, well, the oversized bird would certainly ruffle a few feathers (hah) if she came swooping down directly over the market square.
it's a bit less crowded today, and for that parker's thankful. she skirts around the edges, shoves too-twitchy fingers into her jeans when she eyes a few more valuable wares. nyla cackles in the back of her head, shoves visions of a street chase through her head. to which parker dispels with a shake of her head.
you can tell when the hovel runs through your veins. you might leave for months, years at a time, but you never forget how to move, walk, breathe, exist. so she lopes, unseen to the eyes who don't give a shit or who know she's got the home advantage, away from the bustling crowd and into an alleway.
she scrambles up the side of a dumpster and then rubs her hands together. sucking in a breath, she jumps upward, fingers snapping around the bottom rung of a ladder. she hauls herself up with a grunt and clambers up, taking care to watch for any movement behind the window curtains. the ladder doesn't go all the way to the top, but it doesn't matter. they're close enough to the top of the building that nyla now has room to gather herself.
the gyrfalcon swoops downward, wings straining in half-closed feathers to avoid scraping against the side of the building. parker grasps nyla's talons with practiced ease and uses her momentum to climb up to the roof.
she huffs, wipes her brows, and dusts off her jeans as she stands. nyla wheels around above her, copper feathers glinting in the midday sun.
She would rather die that admit this, but sometimes studying all day got pretty boring. The human brain could only focus on one subject for so long before trying to find a distraction. Zari did not like the idea of losing to anyone, not even herself, and typically tried to push ahead. The work had to be done eventually.
Just…not today. She needed some time off.
Hey, this was planned a good month in advance, which made her different from those who decided to slack off at whim. Besides, most of the day would be spent practicing on her broom, which Zari kind of had to do. A quidditch star such as herself had to stay in top condition—who knew when the next tournament would begin? The fact that she enjoyed being in the air was just a cool side benefit. Or maybe part of her nature.
Look, this was not the time to debate whether her elemental affinity had anything to do with her love of flying. Zari spun around on her broomstick a few times in a effort to stop thinking for a moment. This was her day off. The weather seemed perfect. She took in a deep breath, closing her eyes to fully immerse herself in the sunlight. Arms outstretched, she drifted along without a care in the world. The moment that Zari finally opened her eyes, well—
“Ah!”
Maybe she should have paid more attention to where she was going. Most people would have noticed the giant bird a lot sooner, but Zari did not begin to swerve out of the way until the last moment. For a second she considered if this was some kind of new monster or something, but nobody else seemed to care. No, this was probably just somebody’s weird familiar. In that case, she ought to apologize for almost accidentally injuring a real person. She had a little experience with the shared pain that came with so close of a bond and, well, it sucked.
Without spending much time looking around, Zari found the nearest human and headed over in their direction. Clearly the person standing on a rooftop would know something about this animal flying overhead. What else would they be doing here?
“That your bird, lady?” she paused mainly to point at the thing and didn’t really wait around for a full response. “Sorry about almost hitting ya, just got distracted by how cool y’all looked back there.”
up here above the bustling marketplace below her, she feels like something more. her legs swing outward; heels bounce gently against the roof's edge. she curls her fingers against the dusty ground and half-closes her eyes. nyla swoops in front of her, head cocked, before she flutters back up higher, higher, higher. normally she'd be begging the bird to take her up there so she can feel the wind in her hair, the lurching of her stomach with every strong beat of nyla's wings. but she's content here, for the moment, and besides--nyla's in a selfish mood. parker would rather not start an argument now if she can help it.
she's suddenly knifed through with a flash of white-hot irritation. at the same moment she hears nyla screech in annoyance. parker cranes her neck back just in time to see a witch nearly collide with her familiar. nyla clacks her beak together in annoyance and parker yells as she scrambles to her feet.
"nyla, come down!" she would rather remove her familiar from any possibility of conflict if she can help it. there's only half a chance that she'll listen to her, but (thank the gods) after a frighteningly long moment of listening to nyla size up her 'opponent,' she gives in.
i'll not let a witch like this ruin our day.
her talons make a grating noise against the rooftop as she lands next to parker. she raises a hand, slides her fingers through nyla's soft feathers as the bird ducks her head under a wing to preen. "you hear that, nyla? she called us cool."
"lovely," the bird responds with a snort.
"don't mind her. she's just upset you made her look bad."
nyla's head jerks. "she--you did not." and then she pauses, fluffs up her feathers. "how fast can your broom fly, little witch?"
Her eyes shone with a brilliance only observed whenever Zari had the chance to talk about her favorite subject: herself. A moment to brag about how awesome was did not happen every day. Certainly not while she was spending time around the other Knights. Most of them were too popular to care about some runt from the Hovel. No, it would be a while until she reached their level of stardom.
But this lady didn’t need to know that.
For a moment, Zari considered landing near the other girl, but enjoyed the feeling of being taller a little too much to willingly bring herself down lower. Let her enjoy this temporary moment of superiority.
She moved her left hand in order to briefly stroke the shaft of her broom. “What, with this baby?”
The Comet might be a little better than the basic stick, but she didn’t want to come off as a damn advertisement for the company she had no stake in. Ah, well, a little embellishment wouldn’t hurt. If people thought that the red coloring helped it move faster, then she had plenty of room to say something equally ridiculous and still have it sound believable.
How quick are normal birds? Did the giant-ness of this one mean that their speed scaled up as well? Zari didn’t know much about animals, but tting here trying to think about the answer would only waste time. I mean, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to figure it out firsthand.
“I wanna say a little faster than you, but for all I know y’all’d lose to a sloth, so…” she flipped over so that her body was hanging upside down. “What, you nervous about something?”
parker's never really dallied with broomsticks. she stole one once, though only to prove that she could, and hadn't ridden it more than a few minutes before nyla opted to be her vessel instead because the bird was much faster. and besides, parker trusted nyla's instincts with flying more than she trusted her own (not that she'd ever admit it to her familiar, oh no). so she has no idea the make or model of the broomstick and even if she did, it wouldn't matter so much. but comet either sounds like a gimmicky name or something worth something.
but she'll be damned before she turns down an offer like the one the girl seems to be making. she definitely wouldn't have to, because nyla nearly trips over herself as she suddenly stands to full attention. she rises a good foot over parker when she wants to. fire crackles at the base of nyla's feathers and the gyrfalcon fans out her tail feathers. heat roils off of her and parker rubs her arm, tells her telepathically to stop being a showoff--that all it's doing is making her look like a child.
"nervous? hah, me! nervous! please." nyla lowers her head, beak clicking angrily together. her claws scrape roughly against the floor and parker loops her arms around nyla's neck with practiced ease as she takes off. a couple of powerful down strokes is all it takes to scatter the dust beneath them and rise to the witch's eye level.
"to the clock tower and back then," parker says, pointing past the witch to the tower in the middle of the square. nyla's muscles strain beneath her and parker can feel her aching, itching to go. so she doesn't wait any longer. the girl gives the witch a salute, a wink, and then nyla dives.
"see you on the other side," she crows, though her breath gets lost to the sudden rush of wind.
